


they'll hang us in the louvre

by blanxkey



Category: SKAM (France)
Genre: (i think), Alternate Universe - College/University, Friends With Benefits, Implied Sexual Content, Light Angst, M/M, eliott takes a while to come around, idiot boys, lucas has a lot of Feeling, tacky description bc it's me what did you expect, they fall in love what's new
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:08:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24948157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanxkey/pseuds/blanxkey
Summary: it starts in a bar, or in an alleyway, or maybe in a thousand different glances and words and kisses. and it keeps on growing with every moment that follows.but it isn’t that simple. nothing is, really.(— or, a friends with benefits au.)
Relationships: Eliott Demaury/Lucas Lallemant
Comments: 31
Kudos: 219





	they'll hang us in the louvre

**Author's Note:**

> i clearly don't know how to tag. sorry for the mess. this is entirely self-indulgent, and not very realistic. it also contains some sexy stuff, but nothing is in too much detail.
> 
> title from lorde's the louvre. 
> 
> unbeta'ed. all mistakes are mine.

He wakes to no light breathing around the room, the taste of slumber too prominent on his tongue. The world is on the verge of summer. It’s the scent that gives it away; it lingers between his sheets, on his pillow, fresh grass and clean air and a faint undercurrent of honey and someone else, someone who’s been here most night. It’s a stubborn thing, never really going away, no matter how many times he tries to wash it. Strangely enough, it all reminds him of winter, an inexorable longing for the cold filling his lungs, for a beginning which is still blurry inside his mind.

Lately, Lucas doesn’t know if there even was a beginning.

He doesn’t know if it really matters.

///

Maybe, possibly, it starts five months ago. The beginning doesn’t come like that though, a bit unclear beneath a thousand moments lining the trail like seeds, each one blooming to complete a pattern reserved only for him to see. The lines stood clandestine; _just friends_ , they’d say. But the night brings with itself a shift, a novelty to their interaction, vivid and unnerving. It starts in a bar; five shots of vodka consumed, Lucas spends his time on the dance floor, under the neons that flash about too fast, fluorescents dripping all around. It does something to his senses, the way everything fades to a static hum in his ear, like being submerged underwater, like he’s drowning, only he doesn’t want to come up.

He dances between a cluster of celestial bodies and doesn’t care about anything else; except, maybe, for the way Eliott Demaury looks at him under these lights, his eyes mercury-bright as he shuffles closer, and Lucas takes his hand and pulls him into the tight knot of people all huddled together. The music plays on, pulsing in a rhythm synchronous to his own heartbeat, but they keep on dancing anyway.

Later when the haze settles, they find themselves outside, standing too close, heavy breaths exhaled into the still of the air. Lucas hides the staccato of his heart over the joint he’s sharing with Eliott, tries to, at least, and the lines, they feel tainted, somehow. Lungs too choked up on smoke and dirty, dirty feelings. The cars go by too fast to count, December air a little cold to the touch. Eliott says something that falls flat in the night. Hazy. It’s all vivid now: the glow of moonlight against the obsidian of Eliott Demaury’s hair, eyes too sharp in the dark, the buttons of his shirt undone to the middle of his chest, revealing a smooth, pale expanse of skin, glowing silver beneath the moon.

It makes Lucas wonder, then, how it would feel to press his lips against the hinge of Eliott’s jaw.

It’s certainly not the beginning, but it feels significant, somehow, plucks the string that has always stretched taut between them. Something that hums through him, beautiful, endless. Echoing. It leaves Lucas with feelings too intense to carry, strong and fervent, cutting through the blues of the night. And the sense that they had settled a long time ago, and they’ve just now come close to realizing it.

It’s certainly not the beginning, but it’s what sets them in motion, he thinks.

///

The thing is, it wasn’t that simple.

The thing is that nothing was, really. It was slow and full of holes and complex feelings they couldn’t quite hold in their bodies. Something about Eliott kept pulling him in, frighteningly, intoxicating, it settled behind the hollow of his ribs, staining and consuming there, until holding back became too tiring, until Lucas gave up, gave in, he did it all. The mess in his chest throbbing with a rhythm of its own, it was too much, too much, _too much_.

And Eliott — his eyes were a thing of the ocean, colors striking, sharp features and the softness hidden within. Eliott had kissed him, first with a gentleness in his hands as though he was scared of breaking him, and then more surely, fiercely, tasting faintly of cigarette smoke and not much else. Fear, desire, want, flooding Lucas' insides with warmth, their bodies like two ends of the same miracle.

An explosion, like a star going supernova —

And, maybe, possibly, this is where it all began.

(Eternal, until it ended. Just this once was all they said. It wasn’t enough.)

///

Eliott lets out a high-pitched whine as Lucas’ mouth closes over the edge of his ear. He kisses his cheekbone and Eliott chases his lips, running a hand through his hair, pulling, hard and unyielding and just on the right side of painful, rendering him breathless. He moves below, sharp teeth against the dip of Eliott’s collarbone; the tattoo just above his heart; over the hollow of his pulse, where the light illuminates a patch of skin dusted in bright red. Lucas wonders, in his daze, if Eliott knows how quick he blushes; every part of him flushed and warm under Lucas’ attention.

He supposes it’s a good thing.

Two a.m. drips with longing around the air they share, intense and treacle thick as Lucas presses him further into the mattress. He puts his hands under Eliott’s head and presses their lips together, the kiss turning messy, needy, a bit of teeth, everything tinged a silver hue. Miraculous. His tongue is hot, urgent, and Lucas tastes the bitter undertones of cigarette smoke and hunger, and that warm, intimate sweetness of another person’s mouth. He chases it all, Eliott’s body pliant and giving underneath him, and Lucas takes, and he wants. He thinks that he would never get tired of wanting.

“Please, Lucas,” Eliott chokes out the name — his name, frantic, in desperate undertones—and it sets his every nerve ending on fire. His hand crawls up Lucas’ neck, thumb brushing against the hollow of his clavicle, and the touch lights Lucas up from inside. A sharp swirl of heat low in his belly, this thing that Eliott does to him, the sounds that leave his vocal cords. He kisses Lucas hard and almost frantic, tugging onto his hair, it’s a sweet, sharp pull. His lungs burn.

“Look at you,” Lucas murmurs against his mouth, breathless, a little awed at the intensity reflected in Eliott’s eyes, like pools of darkened silver. “So eager. So ready.”

Eliott lets out a huff as he moves away. “Fuck off.” The words catch on the side of his neck where Eliott’s lips are now pressing, scorching and damp, and then, sharp, and almost carnal: “ _fuck me_.”

///

(— just this once, they’d said.)

Eliott was still recovering from his breakup with Lucille, the first time it had happened. He was hurt, he said, and so incredibly tired that it warranted a long break. That he deserved it, even. And Lucas. He could pull through, he thought he could, after all, Eliott was just an itch he badly needed to scratch, under his skin (and in his head, his lungs, behind brittle ribs, it stayed, it did). A cruel sort of want in his bones, too obvious, much like the sharp pull between them.

After that, though, they’d lasted only a week.

A week of stolen glances and tight smiles whenever they crossed paths on the university grounds, going out to meet in their free time like friends did, each interaction filled with a flicker of attraction, and maybe something more, something Eliott couldn’t offer back in the same way Lucas did.

It broke like a storm when they were hanging out at Eliott’s. When one moment they were watching another one of his favorite movies, an oscar fiasco that Lucas couldn’t quite pay attention to, and the next Eliott’s mouth was on his, and Eliott’s shirt was gone and their jeans were unzipped and then. And then Eliott was pressing him back against the couch, panting, shivering, his hand wrapping around them both, all skin against skin against the calluses on his palm, and Lucas tasted stardust when he pressed his lips to the smooth plane of Eliott’s neck and came first, galaxies unraveling behind his eyelids.

Later, with Eliott’s hand touching the ends of Lucas’ hair, he’d huffed, “We’re so _fucking_ stupid, aren’t we?”

“Regretting it already?” A heaviness clung onto Eliott’s voice.

“Fuck, no. I just think we complicated everything even more.”

“I’m sorry, Lucas,” he said softly. Lucas liked the way he said his name, rounded syllables and its raspy hues, the warmth it seemed to carry. “I’m just not looking for a relationship right now.”

It didn’t hurt much, just a dull ache blooming between his lungs, smothering, much like what desire did. Eliott’s knee was jittery where he sat pressed to his side, and Lucas put his hand out to squeeze it lightly. “I understand,” and he did, but he was just a human, and human beings were weak, fallible creatures, aching for the things they couldn’t really have.

And then it happened again, and again, and again, until it became a countless affair. Until Eliott was taking him home every other night and marking up every inch of his skin, but he still wouldn’t call him his.

///

Eliott’s apartment feels strangely warm, alight, as though the sun spills through his windows at all hours of the day, washing over the walls in a perpetually soft glow. It shades over the furniture, specks of dust swirling in the shivery light. His books and his vinyl’s and art supplies stacked into a shelf by the corner, sheet music lying around somewhere, everything cluttered in a way that is eerily characteristic of him. There are drawings everywhere. Stark white pages against the grayscales and charcoal smudges, paintings and half-finished sketches spread over the living room floor, taped to the walls. There are some in his bedroom too, albeit a bit different, all in haunting blacks; long silhouettes and lines and forlorn shades that Lucas takes too long to understand, fingertips uncertain as they follow the lines from afar, not quite touching. They never do.

It’s affection he feels for this place and the boy it homes, affection, but not quite. It's an all-consuming thing, twisting into a helix of something deeper, and it brings love, then, too ruinous of a thing in its syllables and its noise, and in everything else it does.

(It bleeds and it chokes, is what it does — but no, it’s not love).

But there’s light filling in all corners of Eliott’s kitchen, artificial, pale over the sharp contours of his face. It smells of rain, from this evening, and, under it, there’s a faint layer of springtime. Eliott would probably taste like a thunderstorm, if Lucas’ lips were to find his and lingered there, the world quick to fall away beneath his fingertips, quiet. In simple present, though, it isn’t, and he doesn’t, and he just lets it hurt in a melancholic sort of way, in the way longing often does.

Instead they have Chinese takeout at the kitchen table, sitting close, knees almost touching, and it’s mostly become a routine now, this. Reasons seemed too flimsy of a thing to have, but they always made for complicated actions, later. Lucas tries not to think too much of it.

“I’m still thinking of yours,” Eliott tells him after a couple of mouthfuls. “I’ve narrowed it down to a few options, but I’m still not sure.”

“You do know that you’re not diagnosing me, right?” Lucas says on an exhale. For some reason, the food tastes like ash in his mouth. “It’s just an animal, Eliott. It shouldn’t take time.”

A crooked smile is turned towards him. “Art always takes time, Lucas.”

His name is soft, always so careful in its inflexions. Lucas huffs, rolls his eyes, says: “Okay, then.” Says, “It’s a relief, honestly.”

“Why?” Eliott stares, perplexed, knee bumping slightly with his, warm at the point of contact.

“Because — because it would be extremely awkward to know you were thinking of an animal when you fucked—”

“Lucas!” Eliott’s laughing already, bright and loud, before he’s reached the end of the sentence. He’s alluring like this, a boy spun out of yellows and golds, and a certain softness hidden behind all his sharp angles — alluring in a way that blinds, makes his heart skip too many beats.

“Well. You asked for it,” he whispers, mirth too evident in the cadence of his voice, words falling into the void between them, and Lucas thinks it’s not just the spirit animal he’s talking about. The universe — it contracts into just the space around them when Eliott leans in closer, when he presses his mouth to Lucas’, laughter still tucked into the corner of his mouth, when he cups his face with both hands and kisses him slowly, deeply, like what the sun does to her flowers. The air turns thick, heat simmering underneath; a shiver crawls up his spine, skin going all shades of red, and then it’s just warm lips and slick tongues and Eliott’s smell getting everywhere.

He takes Lucas right there, against the kitchen table, gentle and too sweet, mouthing at the soft skin low on his belly, only touches him with his hands at the very end and it’s — soft, intimate, and Lucas gasps, shuddering when Eliott grips him too tight. But it’s good, so good, this moments in its breathless wonder, the wild pace to his heart, and the feeling of Eliott’s mouth on him, the cloying heat — it’s exquisite.

Lucas chokes on the feelings inside his lungs, and the ache that blooms is sweet, saccharine.

///

He’d come home most nights, tired, a flailing heart cradled in the palm of his hand, wanting out, and he’d come home to Yann on their couch, blinds drawn open to pull moonlight into the living room. He’d be holding a cup of coffee, or a controller, or just his notes, brows furrowed like he thought the universe had it out for him specifically, but he’d let Lucas sit and lean into him with a half-smile and a jut of his chin. The smell of Eliott would be all over his senses, all over his clothes, impervious to everything else, and Yann would know, but he never asked, and Lucas never really had to explain.

One night, the boys had come over, and they had brought so much beer that he’d found cans under his bed, even. It had been a silly night, drunken jokes and karaoke’s sung to the music from Arthur’s machine, at some point, Yann had said: “Do you guys remember how Baz chased Daphne all through high school?”

There was laughter, a moment of complete hilarity while Basile spluttered out some non-words, and Arthur snorted, “Do you remember how hopeless he was?”

“You were so whipped, _Jesus Christ_.” It was funny, agreeably, friends goofing around like friends did. They’d moved to Truth and Dare, and Lucas had leaned back against the couch and wondered about it for a nanosecond, but something stuck, though. It always did. An inescapable yearning filling his insides at the memory.

Later, when they went around cleaning whatever they could, Lucas asked:

“Hey, Yann, do you — did you ever think that Baz was willing to do it forever?”

Yann turned to him, frowning in the soft way he did. “What?”

“You know,” he said, flailing his hand, suddenly lost for words. “That he planned to ‘chase’ Daphy forever, if she hadn’t come around?”

“Maybe he did, Lu,” Yann had said. “Or maybe he didn’t, but I don’t know. It’s like…asking the flame to burn you twice. Nobody would like that.”

“Yeah,” he spoke to the walls, voice too quiet, like the atmosphere was drowning out the sounds, and the conversation sloshed around confusingly. Or maybe it was just the booze, they had been drinking after all. “No one would.”

Yann didn’t say anything, but his face went soft, gray understanding was all there was as they went about in the drunken buzz. “Coffee?” he asked after a while.

Lucas didn’t think he could keep anything down, his ribs starting to bruise, hurt, but he’d nodded anyway. It was Yann’s answer to everything for a reason.

///

Lucas gets out of work when it is still light out, wind carrying all sorts of sounds. It rattles about in a sort of rhythm, everything does. And Eliott meets him soon after, hands in his pocket, eyes twinkling. There’s a strange familiarity in the way he stands, his art supplies in the canvas bag he’s carrying, the impossible shade of red to his lips; all nervous energy.

It was terribly busy today, Mondays usually are, from the high afternoon rush in this café he works at, the hiss of coffee machines and the cacophony of conversation played around gratingly. Lucas was left to the almost comfort of the smell of fresh coffee. The number of times he’d sighed from behind the counter was a countless affair, and then phone in his pocket had stirred with a simple text ( _pick you up at 4?_ ) _._ People came and went, rarely anyone stayed for long, there was small talk, a comment or two about the weather, Lucas didn’t know what to say.

“Where to?” he asks.

Eliott takes him to an old diner, colors all faded but it still has a charm. “I thought we could eat together,” he mumbles. _Together_ , the word is messy, disconcerting, its implications far too dangerous to even consider. Lucas bites his lip, flustered for some reason. They sit at a booth by the windows, and he watches as frazzled daylight still breathes around them, breathing in the same way as he orders some fries. Opposite him, Eliott does too, along with a disgustingly sweet drink, his bag tucked behind him, their knees touching just the slightest under the table. Lucas stares, curious, not used to the mundanity of it all, not commenting on the mismatched scene they make, stares until their food arrives, and then he has to look away.

Eliott drums his fingers against the table, looking down at the greasy fries before catching Lucas’ eyes. “Well, not too bad for dinner, I suppose,” he laughs, it’s a charming sound.

“It’s barely evening, Eliott.”

Eliott just rolls his eyes. “Late lunch, then.”

“Listen,” he begins again when they’re almost finished, fingertips tracing over his bottom lip. “Are you free this Friday?”

Lucas nods. “Why?”

“There’s an art exhibition.” His hands flail. “It’s gonna have my art —”

“— wait, wait. Your art?” Lucas cuts in, voice tinged with surprise. “Eliott, that’s. That’s incredible.”

Averted eyes trail the end of his sentence. “It’s, umm, it’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing,” Lucas scoffs lightly. “It’s huge.”

Silence is all that follows as he stares, Eliott’s cheeks are a pretty shade of pink. It is strangely endearing. He shrugs, “I guess, yeah,” and after a moment that lasts longer than a minute, he tilts his head to the side and, with eyes that feel calculating, says, “So?”

“So what?”

“— will you come?”

The words are said in earnest, hopeful, and Lucas coughs on the feelings blooming inside of him, the possibility. It’s bittersweet in a way that gets caught in his throat, that can choke if he isn’t careful. Lucas tries not thinking too much of it. This isn’t a date, of course, it never is, and the truth of it stings. But the truth also is that he wants it to be terribly, selfishly, so badly it hurts. This _thing_ that doesn’t even have a name — people have names, and storms do, too, chaos usually does — and he thinks it’s because they’re scared of ruining it, too.

But he knows better, he does, still he finds himself nodding. “Yes,” he whispers, the word almost shy on his tongue.

Eliott gives him a bright smile, one that lights up his entire face, one he does when he is genuinely pleased by something. Nothing much is said after.

They part when the sun has lowered behind the seedy architecture, colors tangling against a fiery sky, and Eliott beneath it with sunset shades playing over his face, in his eyes, his smile. He kisses Lucas’ cheek under a bus stand, touches light fingers to his cheekbone, and Lucas smiles, warmth filling the insides of his lungs. Then, with a _see you_ whispered into the space between them, Eliott turns the other way.

Wind murmurs with the dead leaves, cars going by at odd intervals, Lucas remains standing there for a long time, cotton candy colors on the back of his hand. He watches them stay between the gaps of his fingers, and he brings them home, kept safe and warm between the hollow of his ribs. They drip out and cover the walls of his room in faded pinks and reds, like dried blood on cloth.

Like love would, if he allowed it to bloom.

///

“It’s me,” Eliott had said, the first time Lucas stayed over, colors rendered dull in the afternoon light pouring through his windows. Lucas looked up from where he’d been staring at a sketch of a racoon on the wall. A glass was placed on the shelf. He hadn’t heard him come from the kitchen. “They’re cool, the racoons. My spirit animal.”

Lucas didn’t see it, though, couldn’t, not in those sharp pencil strokes and the contrasting grays and whites, drawing color out of everything else with its contrived shades. But he supposed Eliott must like that, this apparent connection, however unclear. Eliott, who noticed the smallest of things and understood.

“They wear a mask,” he said, a brittle thing his mind had caught, repeated. “Most people do.”

He could feel Eliott looking at him, and when he turned all he could see was Eliott’s face above him: in perfect symmetries, the gray of his eyes and the soft curve of his smile. His hand rose up to ruffle Lucas’ hair.

“Not for long. Hiding can’t be done forever, you know,” he replied, in an entirely honest, artless way he sometimes had. It was difficult not to blanch at the quiet conviction in his voice, and there had been a part of Lucas that didn’t believe him. “Feelings don’t work like that,” Eliott had continued, it sounded like a poem, or a song. “Push something down it turns on you, and it grows, too. In your lungs and in your airways. Coped up behind your ribs, it doesn’t let you breathe.”

There was a heaviness in Lucas’ heart, he’d realized, the words like shards under his skin. They hung around them in a way that stung, thorny around the edges. It was too real, the almost truth of it all, the loss of control over things that felt like choices once. And choices weren’t built to wound, to end just like that. He’d wondered then, how Eliott knew all of this, how he’d sounded like he was speaking to that hard, cold part buried deep inside Lucas, still in hiding.

“It sounds cruel,” was all he could say. Eliott simply shrugged, timid, a faint smile curving along his mouth. It felt like lost hope.

“What about me?” he asked, a change of subject, while his ribs pressed in with a dull sort of ache. “What would I be?”

Eliott had ran his eyes over his appearance, briefly, far too quickly, as though on purpose. “I don’t know,” he said at length. “I’d have to think about it.”

///

Neon colours everything. There are paintings in deep shades, blues and purples and reds, even, and he drinks cheap wine out of a flute and watches these colours surround Eliott like a halo, carefully softening out the lines of him. Unsurprisingly enough, he looks like he belongs.

He takes Lucas through the wide room with artworks hanged on its walls, explaining each stroke, the cadence of his voice a careful hum, expression wistful, almost. They stop at a corner, and three canvases look back at them with contrasting shades of grays and cyans and oranges, a calmness within a chaos, like the heart of a fire. And admittedly Lucas doesn’t know much about art or its intricacies, but he thinks that they’re—

“They’re beautiful.”

Eliott smiles, then: a small, frail, shivery thing, but it breaks the violets dripping all around them. “They’re mine.”

Lucas turns, eyes tracing the shapes on the canvas. “What do you call them?” he asks into the open space. Eliott’s voice, when it comes, is sweet, warm.

“Polaris,” he answers, “It’s a small series I’d been working on for a while.”

Polaris, north star, the way home. They’re different words for the same thing.

“They’re wonderful, Eliott. And brave.” The words stumble out before he can stop them. “I don’t know how you do it. This. It must take a lot of courage.”

His heart flutters when Eliott looks at him, just looks, and maybe it falls, too. “Thank you, Lucas,” he says, blinking slowly, wondering, “for coming here, and for everything you said. You made me so happy.”

Lucas smiles, _you’re welcome_. Still Eliott keeps on looking, and Lucas looks back. Fingers fall to the back of his hand, brush over his knuckles fleetingly, lovingly, and Lucas’ skin sparks underneath them. And then they circle around his hand in a soft grasp, squeeze it once, twice, three times. There are maybe a million hues written into the creases of Eliott face. He’s pretty like this — breathtaking, Lucas thinks, with dusty red cheeks and boyish charm and eyes that glimmer in the light. Lucas knows he’s pretty in every way, but somehow, with heart beating awfully out of pace, Lucas just—

He just knows that he’s fallen in love.

It’s a devastating sort of realization.

It feels ruinous, too, in the way his heart just about tips over his ribcage. Because, you see, this thing with Eliott, it’s all watery, built to break apart, end. All this time he’s been half-heartedly trying to run away, convincing himself to leave before he inevitably burns, and breaks, and bleeds.

“Lucas?” Eliott’s face appears in his line of vision, face furrowed with concern.

“I—I’m sorry,” he speaks when he trusts his voice, clearing his throat afterwards. “What were you saying?”

“I was just asking if you were ready to leave?”

Eliott brings him home down a familiar path, stopping under the mercury vapor to kiss him, but beyond that it is dark, darker even, shadows flickering, shifting. Lucas tries to soothe the voice in his head when Eliott unlocks his door, heart beating unevenly as he carries him to bed, and everything is tinged soft and quiet. Shirts are removed, other bits of clothing follow soon after, Eliott’s mouth over his chest and ribs, slow and deliberate. The mattress huffs when Eliott presses in, foreheads pressing together, his hands everywhere, and Lucas groans when he picks up speed. Lips bitten, warmth everywhere, it’s unrelenting, unyielding, different.

Gods, does it feel different.

Eyelids growing heavy, he lets Eliott pull him close, after. Lets himself be tucked into his chest, soothed by the thump, thump, thump of Eliott’s heart. Nothing sweet is said, and Lucas thinks that he’ll tell him soon, maybe in the morning, when the world wouldn’t be exhausted and a bit hazy around the edges.

Eliott kisses his forehead while he falls into slumber, waking up too many hours later to sunlight in his eyes, washing over the walls in bright golds. The space beside him is empty, cold to touch, still smelling of all the sweet things Eliott is made of. Sheets tangle around his neck as he gets up, something on Eliott’s pillow catching the glint of the light. He rubs the sleep from his eyes, it’s —

It’s a brass key.

And lying under it, a hedgehog drawn over a post-it note, captioned:

_so you can let yourself in any time. p.s. you’re beautiful when you sleep._

///

(“Don’t let it hurt you, Lucas,” Yann said. The words sounded almost grieving, like they were scratching past his throat.)

///

It scares him, sometimes, how easy it is to hope.

It’s easy when Eliott smiles at him like it’s the easiest thing to do, his eyes crinkling in the corners.

When he takes him places and always, always brings him home afterwards.

When he gives him a fucking _key_.

So, standing on the edge, it’s easy to want, to feel, to _hope,_ and to just take the fall and let it hurt.

///

(

_had to pick a shift at work_

_i’m_ _☹_ _sorry_

_what are you doing this evening???_

_theres a movie you have to watch_

_spoiler alert! it’s v v cute_

_i think you’d like it!!!_

_lucas?_

)

///

Lucas is drinking stale beer, left alone and a bit tipsy in the middle of Idriss’ living room on a warm Saturday night, when he catches Eliott’s eyes and realizes that fate is a fickle, fickle thing.

It’s funny, the way time slows and speeds up in a sudden moment, the way it seems to move in a circle, so slowly that it’s unnoticeable, and then all at once, until you end up at the point where it all started. A cruel mockery fate makes out of you, all those things you could’ve stopped, all those ways you could’ve run the other way.

And Eliott does. He turns around and then he’s walking away, moving through the throng of bodies, head ducked low on his shoulders and face creased, frowning, maybe, though Lucas can’t tell. He just stands for a moment, unblinking, watching him go, and —

It aches.

In a split second, he’s moving too, following Eliott as he heads for the door, and they step out into the clear night silently. The distance between them feels large and looming, Lucas doesn’t try to close it, instead finding focus on the hunched shape of Eliott’s shoulder and the way he’s taking short, measured steps, as though he doesn’t really want to get away. Hope rears its ugly head again, the knowledge that Eliott Demaury holds Lucas’ heart in the hollow of his palm wrecking a chaos inside of him. The silence gets too much when they near Eliott’s neighborhood, and Lucas opens his mouth to speak.

“We need to stop leaving like this,” is what comes out.

It’s the wrong thing to say, apparently, because Eliott takes too long to turn around, face hardened, affronted. Their eyes meet over the asphalt.

“It’s been a week, Lucas,” he comments, sounding distant, and he looks tired under the streetlights glimmering against the contours, the shadows under his eyes. “You didn’t call, you didn’t text me back. And now you’re here, you’re — why didn’t you text me back?”

His heart sinks. “Because. Because I—”

“Because what?”

“Because I was going to end things with you!” he says, the words stumble out in an angry drawl. Eliott didn’t get to ask questions, to get angry, when it was Lucas who had been hurting all along. He watches as all color leaves Eliott’s face, something like hurt flashing in his eyes, but he can’t stop now. “Because I wasn’t being fair to myself, to you. Because I can’t do this anymore. Whatever we have, it’s lopsided and fucking messy and it’s been months and, and —” he swallows, lungs burning. “I thought I could, but I can’t.”

“It’s not! Lucas, it’s not lopsided,” Eliott speaks, taking a step forward, voice shaking, tremors running through his tone.

A bitter laugh escapes his throat. “It isn’t _anything_ , Eliott,” he spits out. “It isn’t anything.”

“You don’t — you can’t say that, you can’t!”

“Why can’t I? It’s true, after all.”

Eliott looks stricken, small, faded like smoke and clouds in a sky the color of a propane flame. The sight causes a sick lurch in his stomach. “Fuck, no, Lucas,” Eliott says, reaching out a hand between them, but then it drops to his side. He seems to shrink even further into himself. “You can’t, not now, because I…never mind, it doesn’t even matter anymore.”

His hands clench, a wave of frustration rolling in. “Fucking hell, just tell me, Eliott.”

You see, it’s fucking easy to hope, it has always been, even easier when Eliott looks at him like he’s the moon, like he’s the center of Eliott’s world, when he speaks in just a whisper, “You can’t because I’m in love with you,” and Lucas’ world completely tilts on its axis.

Eliott takes a step back, his gaze falling away. “And I want more, so much more with you, Lucas. But. It doesn’t matter,” he echoes. “Goodbye.”

And then he’s spinning away, he’s leaving, and Lucas can’t have that, not now, not when it feels right for once. Not when there’s still so much to say, Eliott’s words settling into his chest and making a mess there, tendrils of congealed blood and these stupid, stupid feelings that made it hard to breathe, once. But it’s fine now. Now, that he knows for sure.

For the second time that night he races forward and grabs Eliott’s arms, bringing him so close that their foreheads touch, and Eliott’s eyes, those eyes, they’re too wide, stunned, the gray of them covered in a watery sheen of tears. Eliott breathes out shakily, bringing his hands to Lucas’ face, tilting his head so their noses brush.

“I love you, Eliott,” Lucas breathes into the space them. The words lift a heavy weight off his chest despite how light they feel. “I’m in love with you, too.”

Eliott lets out a choked noise, and then he kisses him. He kisses Lucas, a little slowly, a little unexpectedly, but then it turns hungry, desperate, Lucas’ teeth scraping against his bottom lip and his hands in his hair, pulling, rough. Hearts in a frenzy. Eliott pulls back will a groan, pressing a thumb against the corner of his mouth.

“It’s cruel, isn’t it,” he croaks out a laugh, the sound lacking neither humor nor pain. “When something you never wanted becomes the only thing you want most.”

Lucas shakes his head. “I’ve always wanted this, you,” he says. “You, on the other hand, have always been stupid.”

“So you’ve said.”

“Why didn’t you say anything before?” Lucas asks before he has half a mind to stop himself.

Eliott gives him a smile, small, watery. “I was a coward,” he says. “I thought I would ruin this, that I would make you leave. I’m — I haven’t been completely honest with you. I need to tell you some things about me.”

“Then tell me in your own time, Eliott.” And then, a whisper, “I love you.”

Lucas watches as his lips widen into a bright grin, pressing his forehead firmer against Eliott’s, eyes boring holes in his, almost reverent. Eliott kisses him again, kisses him until the streetlamp flickers above their heads and the stars come home, soothing a thumb over his cheeks and under his eyes. He drags his lips over the side of Lucas’s neck, and says, “Lucas Lallemant, would you give me the honor of being my boyfriend?”

And Lucas watches him, still, a bit helpless, open, irrevocably in love.

**Author's Note:**

> we love dramatic confessions.
> 
> thank you for reading. i thrive on comments and kudos. or you can come say hi to me on tumblr (@blanxkey).


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